Kitabı oku: «Nan of Music Mountain», sayfa 10
Lefever finished his deal, threw down the pack, and picked up his hand. His suspicious eyes never rose above the level of the faces at the table; but when he had thumbed his cards and looked from one to the other of the remaining players to read the weather-signals, he perceived on Scott’s face an unwonted expression, and looked to where the scout’s gaze was turned for an explanation of it. Lefever’s own eyes at the sight of the thinned, familiar face behind Elpaso’s chair, starting, opened like full moons. The big fellow spread one hand out, his cards hidden within it, and with the other hand prudently drew down his pile of chips. “Gentlemen,” he said lightly, “this game is interned.” He rose and put a silent hand across the table over Elpaso’s shoulder. “Henry,” he exclaimed impassively, “one question, if you please–and only one: How in thunder did you do it?”
CHAPTER XVII
STRATEGY
One week went to repairs. To a man of action such a week is longer than ten years of service. But chained to a bed in the Sleepy Cat hospital, de Spain had no escape from one week of thinking, and for that week he thought about Nan Morgan.
He rebelled at the situation that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality of one or another of their following within the Gap afforded a refuge for practically any mountain criminal.
But none of these reflections lightened de Spain’s burden of discontent. One thought alone possessed him–Nan; her comely body, which he worshipped to the tips of her graceful fingers; her alert mind, which he saw reflected in the simplest thought she expressed; her mobile lips, which he followed to the least sound they gave forth! The longer he pictured her, figured as she had appeared to him like a phantom on Music Mountain, the more he longed to be back at the foot of it, wounded again and famished. And the impulse that moved him the first moment he could get out of bed and into a saddle was to spur his way hard and fast to her; to make her, against a score of burly cousins, his own; and never to release her from his sudden arms again.
With de Spain, to think was to do; at least to do something, but not without further careful thinking, and not without anticipating every chance of failure. And his manner was to cast up all difficulties and obstacles in a situation, brush them aside, and have his will if the heavens fell. Such a temperament he had inherited from his father’s fiery heart and his mother’s suffering, close-set lips as he had remembered them in the little pictures of her; and he now set himself, while doing his routine work every day, to do one particular thing–to see, talk to, plead with, struggle with the woman, or girl, rather–child even, to his thoughts, so fragile she was–this girl who had given him back his life against her own marauding relatives.
For many days Nan seemed a match for all the wiles de Spain could use to catch sight of her. He spent his days riding up and down the line on horseback; driving behind his team; on the stages; in and out of the streets of Sleepy Cat–nominally looking for stock, for equipment, for supplies, or frankly for nothing–but always looking for Nan.
His friends saw that something was absorbing him in an unusual, even an extraordinary way, yet none could arrive at a certain conclusion as to what it was. When Scott in secret conference was appealed to by Jeffries, he smiled foolishly, at a loss, and shook his head.
Lefever argued with less reticence. “It stands to reason, Jeffries. A man that went through that ten minutes at Calabasas would naturally think a good deal about what he is getting out of his job, and what his future chances are for being promoted any minute, day or night, by a forty-five.”
“Perhaps his salary had better be raised,” conceded Jeffries reflectively.
“I figure,” pursued Lefever, “that he has already saved the company fifty thousands in depredations during the next year or two. The Calabasas gang is busted for five years–they would eat out of his hand–isn’t that so, Bob?”
“The Calabasas gang, yes; not the Morgans.”
John’s eyes opened on Scott with that solemnity he could assume to bolster a baldly unconvincing statement. “Not now, Bob. Not now, I admit; but they will.”
Scott only smiled. “What do you make out of the way he acts?” persisted Lefever, resenting his companion’s incredulity.
“I can’t make anything of it,” premised Bob, “except that he has something on his mind. If you’ll tell me what happened from the time he jumped through the window at Calabasas till he walked into his room that night at the barn, I’ll tell you what he’s thinking about.”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“Henry left some things out of his story.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard him tell it.”
Jeffries, acting without delay on the suspicion that de Spain was getting ready to resign, raised his salary. To his surprise, de Spain told him that the company was already paying him more than he was worth and declined the raise; yet he took nobody whomsoever into his confidence.
However, the scent of something concealed in de Spain’s story had long before touched Lefever’s own nostrils, and he was stimulated by mere pride to run the secret down. Accordingly, he set himself to find, in a decent way, something in the nature of an explanation.
De Spain, in the interval, made no progress in his endeavor to see Nan. The one man in the country who could have surmised the situation between the two–the barn boss, McAlpin–if he entertained suspicions, was far too pawky to share them with any one.
When two weeks had passed without de Spain’s having seen Nan or having heard of her being seen, the conclusion urged itself on him that she was either ill or in trouble–perhaps in trouble for helping him; a moment later he was laying plans to get into the Gap to find out.
Nothing in the way of a venture could be more foolhardy–this he admitted to himself–nothing, he consoled himself by reflecting, but something stronger than danger could justify it. Of all the motley Morgan following within the mountain fastness he could count on but one man to help him in the slightest degree–this was the derelict, Bull Page. There was no choice but to use him, and he was easily enlisted, for the Calabasas affair had made a heroic figure of de Spain in the barrooms. De Spain, accordingly, lay in wait for the old man and intercepted him one day on the road to Sleepy Cat, walking the twenty miles patiently for his whiskey.
“You must be the only man in the Gap, Bull, that can’t borrow or steal a horse to ride,” remarked de Spain, stopping him near the river bridge.
Page pushed back the broken brim of his hat and looked up. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said, imparting a cheerful confidence, “but ten years ago I had horses to lend to every man ’tween here and Thief River.” He nodded toward Sleepy Cat with a wrecked smile, and by a dramatic chance the broken hat brim fell with the words: “They’ve got ’em all.”
“Your fault, Bull.”
“Say!” Up went the broken brim, and the whiskied face lighted with a shaking smile, “you turned some trick on that Calabasas crew–some fight,” Bull chuckled.
“Bull, is old Duke Morgan a Republican?”
Bull looked surprised at the turn of de Spain’s question, but answered in good faith: “Duke votes ’most any ticket that’s agin the railroad.”
“How about picking a couple of good barnmen over in the Gap, Bull?”
“What kind of a job y’got?”
“See McAlpin the next time you’re over at Calabasas. How about that girl that lives with Duke?”
Bull’s face lighted. “Nan! Say! she’s a little hummer!”
“I hear she’s gone down to Thief River teaching school.”
“Came by Duke’s less’n three hours ago. Seen her in the kitchen makin’ bread.”
“They’re looking for a school-teacher down there, anyway. Much sickness in the Gap lately, Bull?”
“On’y sickness I knowed lately is what you’re responsible for y’self,” retorted Bull with a grin. “Pity y’ left over any chips at all from that Calabasas job, eh?”
“See McAlpin, Bull, next time you’re over Calabasas way. Here”–de Spain drew some currency from his pocket and handed a bill to Page. “Go get your hair cut. Don’t talk too much–wear your whiskers long and your tongue short.”
“Right-o!”
“You understand.”
“Take it from old Bull Page, he’s a world’s wonder of a sucker, but he knows his friends.”
“But remember this–you don’t know me. If anybody knows you for a friend of mine, you are no good to me. See?”
Bull was beyond expressing his comprehension in words alone. He winked, nodded, and screwed his face into a thousand wrinkles. De Spain, wheeling, rode away, the old man blinking first after him, and then at the money in his hand. He didn’t profess to understand everything in the high country, but he could still distinguish the principal figures at the end of a bank-note. When he tramped to Calabasas the next day to interview McAlpin he received more advice, with a strong burr, about keeping his own counsel, and a little expense money to run him until an opening presented itself on the pay-roll.
But long before Bull Page reached Calabasas that day de Spain had acted. When he left Bull at the bridge, he started for Calabasas, took supper there, ordered a saddle-horse for one o’clock in the morning, went to his room, slept soundly and, shortly after he was called, started for Music Mountain. He walked his horse into the Gap and rode straight for Duke Morgan’s fortress. Leaving the horse under a heavy mountain-pine close to the road, de Spain walked carefully but directly around the house to the east side. The sky was cloudy and the darkness almost complete. He made his way as close as he could to Nan’s window, and raised the soft, crooning note of the desert owl.
After a while he was able to distinguish the outline of her casement, and, with much patience and some little skill remaining from the boyhood days, he kept up the faint call. Down at the big barn the chained watch-dog tore himself with a fury of barking at the intruder, but mountain-lions were common in the Gap, and the noisy sentinel gained no credit for his alarm. Indeed, when the dog slackened his fierceness, de Spain threw a stone over his way to encourage a fresh outburst. But neither the guardian nor the intruder was able to arouse any one within the house.
Undeterred by his failure, de Spain held his ground as long as he dared. When daybreak threatened, he withdrew. The following night he was in the Gap earlier, and with renewed determination. He tossed a pebble into Nan’s open window and renewed his soft call. Soon, a light flickered for an instant within the room and died out. In the darkness following this, de Spain thought he discerned a figure outlined at the casement. Some minutes later a door opened and closed. He repeated the cry of the owl, and could hear a footstep; the next moment he whispered her name as she stood before him.
“What is it you want?” she asked, so calmly that it upset him. “Why do you come here?”
Where he stood he was afraid of the sound of her voice, and afraid of his own. “To see you,” he said, collecting himself. “Come over to the pine-tree.”
Under its heavy branches where the darkness was most intense, he told her why he had come–because he could not see her anywhere outside.
“There is nothing to see me about,” she responded, still calm. “I helped you because you were wounded. I was glad to see you get away without fighting–I hate bloodshed.”
“But put yourself in my place a little, won’t you? After what you did for me, isn’t it natural I should want to be sure you are well and not in any trouble on my account?”
“It may be natural, but it isn’t necessary. I am in no trouble. No one here knows I even know you.”
“Excuse me for coming, then. I couldn’t rest, Nan, without knowing something. I was here last night.”
“I know you were.”
He started. “You made no sign.”
“Why should I? I suspected it was you. When you came again to-night I knew I should have to speak to you–at least, to ask you not to come again.”
“But you will be in and out of town sometimes, won’t you, Nan?”
“If I am, it will not be to talk with you.”
The words were spoken deliberately. De Spain was silent for a moment. “Not even to speak to me?” he asked.
“You must know the position I am in,” she answered. “And what a position you place me in if I am seen to speak to you. This is my home. You are the enemy of my people.”
“Not because I want to be.”
“And you can’t expect them not to resent any acquaintance on my part with you.”
He paused before continuing. “Do you count Gale Morgan as one of your people?” he asked evenly.
“I suppose I must.”
“Don’t you think you ought to count all of your friends, your well-wishers, those who would defend you with their lives, among your people?” She made no answer. “Aren’t they the kind of people,” he persisted, “you need when you are in trouble?”
“You needn’t remind me I should be grateful to you–”
“Nan!” he exclaimed.
“For I am,” she continued, unmoved. “But–”
“It’s a shame to accuse me in that way.”
“You were thinking when you spoke of what happened with Gale on Music Mountain.”
“I wish to God you and I were on Music Mountain again! I never lived or did anything worth living for, till you came to me that day on Music Mountain. It’s true I was thinking of what happened when I spoke–but not to remind you you owed anything to me. You don’t; get that out of your head.”
“I do, though.”
“I spoke in the way I did because I wanted to remind you of what might happen some time when I’m not near.”
“I shan’t be caught off my guard again. I know how to defend myself from a drunken man.”
He could not restrain all the bitterness he felt. “That man,” he said deliberately, “is more dangerous sober than drunk.”
“When I can’t defend myself, my uncle will defend me.”
“Ask him to let me help.”
“He doesn’t need any help. And he would never ask you, if he did. I can’t live at home and know you; that is why I ask you not to come again.”
He was silent. “Don’t you think, all things considered,” she hesitated, as if not knowing how easiest to put it, “you ought to be willing to shake hands and say good-by?”
“Why, if you wish it,” he answered, taken aback. And he added more quietly, “yes, if you say so.”
“I mean for good.”
“I–” he returned, pausing, “don’t.”
“You are not willing to be fair.”
“I want to be fair–I don’t want to promise more than human nature will stand for–and then break my word.”
“I am not asking a whole lot.”
“Not a whole lot to you, I know. But do you really mean that you don’t want me ever to speak to you again?”
“If you must put it that way–yes.”
“Well,” he took a long breath, “there is one way to make sure of that. I’ll tell you honestly I don’t want to stand in the way of such a wish, if it’s really yours. As you have said, it isn’t fair, perhaps, for me to go against it. Got your pistol with you, Nan?”
“No.”
“That is the way you take care of yourself, is it?”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself not to be. And you don’t even know whom you’ll meet before you can lock the front door again. You promised me never to go out without it. Promise me that once more, will you?” She did as he asked her. “Now, give me your hand, please,” he went on. “Take hold of this.”
“What is it?”
“The butt of my revolver. Don’t be afraid.” She heard the slight click of the hammer with a thrill of strange apprehension. “What are you doing?” she demanded hurriedly.
“Put your finger on the trigger–so. It is cocked. Now pull.”
She caught her breath. “What do you mean?”
He was holding the gun in his two hands, his fingers overlapping hers, the muzzle at the breast of his jacket. “Pull,” he repeated, “that’s all you have to do; I’m steadying it.”
She snatched back her hand. “What do you mean?” she cried. “For me to kill you? Shame!”
“You are too excited–all I asked you was to take the trouble to crook your finger–and I’ll never speak to you again–you’ll have your wish forever.”
“Shame!”
“Why shame?” he retorted. “I mean what I say. If you meant what you said, why don’t you put it out of my power ever to speak to you? Do you want me to pull the trigger?”
“I told you once I’m not an assassin–how dare you ask me to do such a thing?” she cried furiously.
“Call your uncle,” he suggested coolly. “You may hold this meantime so you’ll know he’s in no danger. Take my gun and call your uncle–”
“Shame on you!”
“Call Gale–call any man in the Gap–they’ll jump at the chance.”
“You are a cold-blooded, brutal wretch–I’m sorry I ever helped you–I’m sorry I ever let you help me–I’m sorry I ever saw you!”
She sprang away before he could interpose a word. He stood stunned by the suddenness of her outburst, trying to listen and to breathe at the same time. He heard the front door close, and stood waiting. But no further sound from the house greeted his ears.
“And I thought,” he muttered to himself, “that might calm her down a little. I’m certainly in wrong, now.”
CHAPTER XVIII
HER BAD PENNY
Nan reached her room in a fever of excitement, angry at de Spain, bitterly angry at Gale, angry with the mountains, the world, and resentfully fighting the pillow on which she cried herself to sleep.
In the morning every nerve was on edge. When her Uncle Duke, with his chopping utterance, said something short to her at their very early breakfast he was surprised by an answer equally short. Her uncle retorted sharply. A second curt answer greeted his rebuff, and while he stared at her, Nan left the table and the room.
Duke, taking two of the men, started that morning for Sleepy Cat with a bunch of cattle. He rode a fractious horse, as he always did, and this time the horse, infuriated as his horses frequently were by his brutal treatment, bolted in a moment unguarded by his master, and flung Duke on his back in a strip of lava rocks.
The old man–in the mountains a man is called old after he passes forty–was heavy, and the fall a serious one. He picked himself up while the men were recovering his horse, knocked the horse over with a piece of jagged rock when the frightened beast was brought back, climbed into the saddle again, and rode all the way into town.
But when his business was done, Duke, too, was done. He could neither sit a horse, nor sit in a wagon. Doctor Torpy, after an examination, told him he was booked for the hospital. A stream of profane protest made no difference with his adviser, and, after many threats and hard words, to the hospital the hard-shelled mountaineer was taken. Sleepy Cat was stirred at the news, and that the man who had defied everybody in the mountains for twenty years should have been laid low and sent to the hospital by a mere bronco was the topic of many comments.
The men that had driven the cattle with Duke, having been paid off, were now past getting home, and there were no telephones in the Gap. De Spain, who was at Calabasas, knew Nan would not be alarmed should her uncle not return that night. But early in the morning a messenger from McAlpin rode to her with a note, telling her of the accident.
Whatever his vices, Duke had been a good protector to his dead brother’s child. He had sent her to good schools and tried to revive in her, despite her untoward surroundings, the better traditions of the family as it had once flourished in Kentucky. Nan took the saddle for Sleepy Cat in haste and alarm. When she reached her uncle’s bedside she understood how seriously he had been hurt, and the doctor’s warnings were not needed to convince her he must have care.
Duke refused to let her leave him, in any case, and Nan relieved the nurse, and what was of equal moment, made herself custodian of the cash in hand before Duke’s town companions could get hold of it. Occasional trips to the Gap were necessary as the weeks passed and her uncle could not be moved. These Nan had feared as threatening an encounter either by accident, or on his part designed, with de Spain. But the impending encounter never took place. De Spain, attending closely to his own business, managed to keep accurate track of her whereabouts without getting in her way. She had come to Sleepy Cat dreading to meet him and fearing his influence over her, but this apprehension, with the passing of a curiously brief period, dissolved into a confidence in her ability to withstand further interference, on any one’s part, with her feelings.
Gale Morgan rode into town frequently, and Nan at first painfully apprehended hearing some time of a deadly duel between her truculent Gap admirer and her persistent town courtier–who was more considerate and better-mannered, but no less dogged and, in fact, a good deal more difficult to handle.
As to the boisterous mountain-man, his resolute little cousin made no secret of her detestation of him. She denied and defied him as openly as a girl could and heard his threats with continued indifference. She was quite alone, too, in her fear of any fatal meeting between the two men who seemed determined to pursue her.
The truth was that after Calabasas, de Spain, from Thief River to Sleepy Cat, was a marked man. None sought to cross his path or his purposes. Every one agreed he would yet be killed, but not the hardiest of the men left to attack him cared to undertake the job themselves. The streets of the towns and the trails of the mountains were free as the wind to de Spain. And neither the town haunts of Calabasas men nor those of their Morgan Gap sympathizers had any champion disposed to follow too closely the alert Medicine Bend railroader.
In and about the hospital, and in the town itself, Nan found the chief obstacle to her peace of mind in the talk she could not always avoid hearing about de Spain. Convalescents in the corridors, practically all of them men, never gathered in sunny corners or at the tables in the dining-room without de Spain’s name coming in some way into the talk, to be followed with varying circumstantial accounts of what really had happened that day at Calabasas.
And with all the known escapades in which he had figured, exhausted as topics, by long-winded commentators, more or less hazy stories of his earlier experiences at Medicine Bend in the company of Whispering Smith were dragged into the talk. One convalescent stage-guard at the hospital told a story one night at supper about him that chilled Nan again with strange fears, for she knew it to be true. He had had it from McAlpin himself, so the guard said, that de Spain’s father had long ago been shot down from ambush by a cattleman and that Henry de Spain had sworn to find that man and kill him. And it was hinted pretty strongly that de Spain had information when he consented to come to Sleepy Cat that the assassin still lived, and lived somewhere around the head of the Sinks.
That night, Nan dreamed. She dreamed of a sinister mark on a face that she had never before seen–a face going into bronzed young manhood with quick brown eyes looking eagerly at her. And before her wondering look it faded, dreamlike, into a soft mist, and where it had been, a man lay, lifting himself on one arm from the ground–his sleeve tattered, his collar torn, his eyes half-living, half-dead, his hair clotted, his lips stiffened and distended, his face drawn. And all of this dissolved into an image of de Spain on horseback, sudden, alert, threatening, looking through the mist at an enemy. Then Nan heard the sharp report of a rifle and saw him whirl half around–struck–in his saddle, and fall. But he fell into her arms, and she woke sobbing violently.
She was upset for the whole day, moody and apprehensive, with a premonition that she should soon see de Spain–and, perhaps, hurt again. The dream unnerved her every time she thought of him. That evening the doctor came late. When he walked in he asked her if she knew it was Frontier Day, and reminded her that just a year ago she had shot against Henry de Spain and beaten the most dangerous man and the deadliest shot on the mountain divide in her rifle match. How he had grown in the imagination of Sleepy Cat and Music Mountain, she said to herself–while the doctor talked to her uncle–since that day a year ago! Then he was no more than an unknown and discomfited marksman from Medicine Bend, beaten by a mountain girl: now the most talked-of man in the high country. And the suspicion would sometimes obtrude itself with pride into her mind, that she who never mentioned his name when it was discussed before her, really knew and understood him better than any of those that talked so much–that she had at least one great secret with him alone.
When leaving, the doctor wished to send over from his office medicine for her uncle. Nan offered to go with him, but the doctor said it was pretty late and Main Street pretty noisy: he preferred to find a messenger.
Nan was sitting in the sick-room a little later–B-19 in the old wing of the hospital, facing the mountains–when there came a rap on the half-open door. She went forward to take the medicine from the messenger and saw, standing before her in the hall, de Spain.
She shrank back as if struck. She tried to speak. Her tongue refused its office. De Spain held a package out in his hand. “Doctor Torpy asked me to give you this.”
“Doctor Torpy? What is it?”
“I really don’t know–I suppose it is medicine.” She heard her uncle turn in his bed at the sound of voices. Thinking only that he must not at any cost see de Spain, Nan stepped quickly into the hall and faced the messenger. “I was over at the doctor’s office just now,” continued her visitor evenly, “he asked me to bring this down for your uncle.” She took the package with an incoherent acknowledgment. Without letting her eyes meet his, she was conscious of how fresh and clean and strong he looked, dressed in a livelier manner than usual–a partly cowboy effect, with a broader Stetson and a gayer tie than he ordinarily affected. De Spain kept on speaking: “The telephone girl in the office down-stairs told me to come right up. How is your uncle?”
She regarded him wonderingly: “He has a good deal of pain,” she answered quietly.
“Too bad he should have been hurt in such a way. Are you pretty well, Nan?” She thanked him.
“Have you got over being mad at me?” he asked.
“No,” she averred resolutely.
“I’m glad you’re not,” he returned, “I’m not over being mad at myself. Haven’t seen you for a long time. Stay here a good deal, do you?”
“All the time.”
“I’ll bet you don’t know what day this is?”
Nan looked up the corridor, but she answered to the point: “You’d lose.”
“It’s our anniversary.” She darted a look of indignant disclaimer at him. But in doing so she met his eyes. “Have you seen the decorations in Main Street?” he asked indifferently. “Come out for a minute and look at them.”
She shook her head: “I don’t care to,” she answered, looking restlessly, this time, down the corridor.
“Come to the door just a minute and see the way they’ve lighted the arches.” She knew just the expression of his eyes that went with that tone. She looked vexedly at him to confirm her suspicion. Sure enough there in the brown part and in the lids, it was, the most troublesome possible kind of an expression–hard to be resolute against. Her eyes fell away, but some damage had been done. He did not say another word. None seemed necessary. He just kept still and something–no one could have said just what–seemed to talk for him to poor defenseless Nan. She hesitated helplessly: “I can’t leave uncle,” she objected at last.
“Ask him to come along.”
Her eyes fluttered about the dimly lighted hall: de Spain gazed on her as steadily as a charmer. “I ought not to leave even for a minute,” she protested weakly.
“I’ll stay here at the door while you go.”
Irresolute, she let her eyes rest again for a fraction of a second on his eyes; when she drew a breath after that pause everything was over. “I’d better give him his medicine first,” she said, looking toward the sick-room door.
His monosyllabic answer was calm: “Do.” Then as she laid her hand on the knob of the door to enter the room: “Can I help any?”
“Oh, no!” she cried indignantly.
He laughed silently: “I’ll stay here.”
Nan disappeared. Lounging against the window-sill opposite the door, he waited. After a long time the door was stealthily reopened. Nan tiptoed out. She closed it softly behind her: “I waited for him to go to sleep,” she explained as she started down the corridor with de Spain. “He’s had so much pain to-day: I hope he will sleep.”
“I hope so, too,” exclaimed de Spain fervently.
Nan ignored the implication. She looked straight ahead. She had nothing to say. De Spain, walking beside her, devoured her with his eyes; listened to her footfalls; tried to make talk; but Nan was silent.
Standing on the wide veranda outside the front door, she assented to the beauty of the distant illumination but not enthusiastically. De Spain declared it could be seen very much better from the street below. Nan thought she could see very well where they stood. But by this time she was answering questions–dryly, it is true and in monosyllables, but answering. De Spain leading the way a step or two forward at a time, coaxed her down the driveway.
She stood again irresolute, he drinking in the fragrance of her presence after the long separation and playing her reluctance guardedly. “Do you know,” she exclaimed with sudden resentment, “you make it awfully hard to be mean to you?”
With a laugh he caught her hand and made her walk down the hospital steps. “You may be as mean as you like,” he answered indifferently. “Only, never ask me to be mean to you.”
“I wish to heaven you would be,” she retorted.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “what we were doing a year ago to-day?”
